MATIKA WILBUR

TRIBE: Swinomish/Tulalip

MEDIUM: Photography and Storytelling

LOCATION: La Conner, Washington

Matika Wilbur, one of the Pacific Northwest's leading photographers, has exhibited extensively in regional, national, and international venues. Matika is also a social documentarian in Indian Country where she explores the contemporary Native identity and experience communicated through the artistry of silver gelating photographs.

She is currently working on Project 562, a national documentary project dedicated to photographing contemporary Native America. Matika is gathering original photographic images and oral narratives from all Tribal communities throughout the United States in a goal to represent Native people from every tribe and expose the astonishing variety of the Indian presence and reality at this juncture. She hopes that we will build cultural bridges, abandon stereotypes, and renew and inspire our national legacy through this project while working to eliminate misleading and stereotypical images.

Matika shared that she has been welcomed into hundreds of tribal communities, and has found that people support the multi-year project, because they would like to see things change and has led to conversations about tribal sovereignty, self-determination, wellness, recovery from historical trauma, decolonization of the mind and revitalization of culture that will accompany the photos in captions, video, and audio recordings.